Internet Search/Transcript
Transcript 'Old Version' Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim: Hey Moby, I'll meet you in the "history" section! Tim: Dear Tim and Moby, how do you do an Internet search? From, Dennis. 'Update' Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Moby is sitting at a computer and looking at a search engine called Gaggle. He types "Moby" into the search field. The results of the search show information on "Moby: the Movie." Moby glares at the screen and changes his search to "Moby robot." The computer shows results about Moby the Robot Accountant. Moby bangs the table in frustration as Tim enters the room. MOBY: Beep! TIM: Egomaniac. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, search engines are pretty good at helping me find things. But sometimes, they don't seem to understand what I'm looking for at all. Why is that? Confused, Dennis. Search engines are often our first stop when we go online. Lots of people set them as the homepage of their browsers. Not surprising, since there are billions of pages on the Internet. An animation shows the Gaggle search engine home page. It is surrounded by lots of other web pages. TIM: Without a way to organize them, navigating the web would be impossible. Search engines filter all this material, making it easier to find what we're looking for. An animation shows the web pages stacked in piles. A Gaggle robot that looks like a magnifying glass flies up the side of one stack and picks a web page from the pile. MOBY: Beep. TIM: There are lots of different search sites, but they all work pretty much the same way. First, you type in what you're looking for—your query. With most of them, you can type just like you're speaking to a person. An animation shows Moby standing next to the Gaggle robot. Moby is wearing an untied necktie. "How do I tie a necktie?" is typed into a search field above him. The Gaggle robot dashes off the screen and returns with a webpage with instructions for tying a necktie. TIM: Search engines are programmed to recognize our natural language. They scan the web to find pages that best match your search terms. Moby ties his tie and gives a thumbs up. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, like when you go ego-surfing to see what people think of you. The search engine actually breaks your query down into keywords. Then it tries to determine which of them are most important. An animation shows "What are people saying about Moby?" typed into the Gaggle search field. The question breaks apart into individual words of different sizes. "Moby" is the biggest, "are people saying" is slightly smaller and "what" and "about" are the smallest. TIM: And, sorry to say, you're not the only Moby out there. So, with this query, the search engine has to guess which one you're looking for. An animation shows three icons representing Moby, Moby the Robot Accountant, and Moby Dick. The Gaggle robot juggles the three icons. TIM: Adding more terms can clear up that confusion. They provide more keywords to help figure out which Moby you mean. Each one is like another clue or puzzle piece to a search engine. An animation shows the three icons. Search terms like "BrainPOP," "robot," orange," and "Tim" are added and the icons for Moby Dick and Moby the Robot Accountant fade away. TIM: The more keywords you plug in, the more likely you are to get the results you're looking for. They don't have to be in a sentence, or in any particular order, or in a lot of cases, even spelled correctly. The icon of Moby becomes a trophy that the Gaggle robot holds above his head in triumph. "Moby robot BrainPOP beep Tim" appear as a string of words in the search field. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, they're not really thinking. Search engines base a lot of their decisions on what other users are doing. Results are weighted, or ordered, according to these patterns. Like how popular a search term is, or if something's in the news. The assumption is that if lots of people are interested in a topic, you must be, too. An animation shows the Gaggle robot making notes in a room filled with screens tracking what users are searching for. Like how popular a search term is or if something's in the news. TIM: You can see how some search engines weight results when you begin a query. You'll start to type in the terms…And then the search engine tries to complete the query for you. It might even ignore terms that you think would make good keywords. An animation shows Moby and the Gaggle robot standing on a stack of pages with the search bar above them. Moby gestures as the query begins, "What is the best". The Gaggle robot finishes the query, making it "What is the best cupcake recipe?" The Gaggle robot fetches a recipe on a website. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Well, there are ways to counteract weighting and get the results you want. Depending on the search engine, a plus sign or quotation marks can signal that a term is important. They'll only return pages where those words definitely appear. An animation shows the Gaggle robot holding a balance scale next to a search field with "Moby" written in it. One side of the scaleholds the icon representing Moby. The other holds the Moby Dick icon. The scale is tipped towards Moby Dick. As "+robot" is added and "BrainPOP" is added in quotations, the scale evens out. TIM: Quotes are also great for searching an exact phrase. A minus sign before a word indicates that it isn't relevant to your search. As "the more you know" is added in quotes and "-whale" is added, the scale tips towards Moby until Moby Dick disappears. TIM: Any page that includes it won't show up in your results. A quick way to tell if your results are improving is to look at the number of hits, or results. An image shows two Gaggle searches side-by-side. There are 72 million search results for just "Moby." The other search for "Moby +robot BrainPOP the more you know –whale" yields 16,000 results. TIM: A lower number usually means you've done a good job of narrowing things down. And the top results will be more likely to match what you're looking for. The search with 16,000 results shows a page called "Moby the Robot" as the first result. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Well, remember, the Internet isn't just for kids trying to research their homework. People use the web for all sorts of stuff. Keeping up with sports, finding movie times, and shopping for just about everything! An animation shows the Gaggle robot sitting on a search bar. Symbols for sports, movies, and shopping appear next to him. TIM: The Internet is a big business for search engines. They make money by showing advertisements alongside search results. And businesses spend a fortune to make sure their web pages appear higher in search results. The animation shows advertisements for tickets, imaginary football, and an online retailer under the search bar. The Gaggle robot throws money in the air. MOBY: Beep? TIM: As with any tool, you just have to be smart about how you use search engines. Use what you learn to keep refining your query. Like if you're interested in researching Abraham's Lincoln's childhood. Your initial results will show you that he spent most of it in Kentucky. Adding that to your query will narrow down your results. An animation shows "Abraham Lincoln childhood" typed into the Gaggle search engine with 10 million results. The Gaggle robot stands on the search and points to Kentucky on a map of the U.S. "Kentucky" is added to the search bar. The number of results decreases to 2.45 million. TIM: Most engines also let you search by specific content types. You can confine results to books, current events, videos, images… Tabs for each of these content types appear below the search bar. TIM: Some let you read through entire chapters, or search for articles in a specific date range. All of which makes research way easier. An image shows a page that displays text from a biography of Abraham Lincoln. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Well, search engines are a great place to start your research. They're really there to show you other sites to investigate. For schoolwork, you can search directly on sites for newspapers and other periodicals. Colleges and university websites have archives of letters, photos, and other primary sources. Those are historical documents made by the people who lived it. Websites run by organizations dedicated to your topic are another good bet. They're likely to have source materials you can't find anywhere else. An animation shows the Gaggle robot standing on the search bar. Websites with newspaper articles and other primary sources, as well as a website for the Abe Lincoln Presidential Library, surround him. TIM: And remember, there's no substitute for a real, live human being. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Teachers and librarians can help you with your searches. They might suggest keywords you never thought of. Or direct you to other resources, online and off. An animation shows a teacher helping a student do research on a computer. TIM: Anyway, I hope I've been some kind of help to you on your little quest. Moby types his name repeatedly into the Gaggle search bar. The Gaggle robot sitting on the edge of the bar looks down and frowns. Tim sighs. TIM: Why do I bother? Old Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby TIM: Hey Moby, I'll meet you at the history section! Category:BrainPOP Transcripts